Archangel

by Sharon Shinn

  “I know,” she said. “It’s worse than we thought.”

  “I keep thinking,” he murmured, “the Gloria is in just a few days. Then everything will be all right again. But then I think, he’s gone to so much trouble already to prevent the Gloria. Surely he won’t stop now.”

  Rachel finished her food quickly and got to her feet. Gabriel stood beside her. “Then let’s get back as soon as we can,” she said.

  He reached for her; the shock of his touch made her tremble involuntarily. He dropped his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I know you’re afraid. But there’s no other way to get back in time. You’ll be safe.”

  She smiled weakly. “I know,” she said, and stepped forward to put her arms around his neck. “I’m not afraid.”

  At the Eyrie, all was mayhem. Someone had spotted them from a distance, so when they arrived, touching down on the central plateau, nearly a hundred people were awaiting them. Rachel was so weary that she actually clung to Gabriel as he set her on her feet, and he kept an arm around her when he felt her stagger. Voices, faces, questions, demands—images and words all ran together into a blur. Rachel knew that Gabriel had to be at least as tired as she was, yet she heard him field inquiries and rap out quick questions of his own. All she could do was stand there mute and exhausted.

  “Here—Hannah—take her to her room. Give her something to make her sleep,” Gabriel was saying. He transferred custody of her dead weight to other hands, and someone began leading her away.

  “No—” she protested faintly, but in truth it was all she could do to put one foot before the other to navigate the hall. Never before had her own room here felt so welcome.

  “Would you like me to help you bathe before you sleep?” Hannah was asking. “You might feel better if you got cleaned up—”

  So she looked a fright; what a comfort. “After I sleep,” Rachel muttered. “Thank you. I just want—I’m so tired—”

  She was asleep before Hannah left the room.

  It was late afternoon when she lay down, and night fell and was far advanced before she woke again, wondering where she was. It was not the arrangement of shapes and shadows that reassured her, but the blended voices of the angel singers, sprinkling their lullabies across the Eyrie.

  It occurred to her to wonder if she would ever again sleep as soundly, as trustfully, as she had under the shelter of Gabriel’s wing, but then she was furious with herself for even thinking about it. She squinched her eyes tightly together to make herself go back to sleep.

  It was relatively early when she woke again—an hour or two past dawn. She did not bother with her usual game; the instant she was awake, she opened her eyes and sat up.

  “I’m not even going to look in the mirror first,” she murmured, standing up and finding all her muscles shaky. “I’m just going to take a bath.”

  She showered and rinsed, showered and rinsed, in the warm falling stream of the water room. She was combing out her tangled wet hair when she stepped back into her bedroom to find she had company.

  “Maga!” she exclaimed.

  The angel turned at the sound of her name, then flung herself across the room with her arms outstretched. “Rachel, Rachel, we’ve been so worried about you! It’s so terrible! Raphael—and then you were kidnapped—and I still can’t believe what they’ve been saying.”

  Rachel laughed. “Calm down. Let me get dressed. Tell me what you’ve heard and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Thus it was to Magdalena that Rachel owed her knowledge of what had happened at the landholders’ meeting. “Gabriel really threatened to change the face of Samaria with the weather patterns?” she said slowly. “And Ariel has agreed to it?”

  Maga nodded, her face troubled. “She doesn’t like it—well, she didn’t like it, but now that we’re hearing all these awful stories about Raphael—well, it looks like Gabriel was right all along.”

  “He is,” Rachel said absently. “But have Elijah and Malachi and all the others been told about—me, and Leah, and everything else?”

  “I don’t know. But I heard—”

  “What?”

  “They say that people are already starting to gather on the Plain,” the angel said in a rush. “Merchants from the river cities, and Jansai clansmen, and Manadavvi … And Obadiah came back from the Plain late last night and said Raphael and Saul and some of his angels were already there.”

  “Raphael’s coming to the Gloria?” Rachel said sharply. “But he doesn’t even believe in Jovah.”

  Maga nodded. “Gabriel says he’s there for some kind of mischief.”

  “Oh, no question.”

  “So he left this morning to see what he could find out.”

  Rachel had been standing at the mirror, still working out the knots in her hair. Now she turned and stared at the angel. “Gabriel’s gone? But he—I thought he would take me with him—” Abruptly she closed her mouth.

  “He asked if I would bring you as soon as I could. Or Obadiah.”

  Rachel turned back to the mirror. She was so angry she could scarcely focus on her reflection. Angry with him, angrier with herself. Of course he would leave her without a word; he had done it over and over again. Stupid to think that everything had changed just because of a night spent camping out in the cold. He would have kept anyone warm with a fold of his wing; it was merely a measure of courtesy. “I’d prefer to travel with the Edori,” she said. “They’ll be leaving for the Plain today, I’m sure. We’ll arrive in plenty of time.”

  “But Rachel. Gabriel said—”

  “Gabriel,” said Rachel incontrovertibly, “is not here.”

  There was a flurry of attention to endure when she did finally emerge from her room, a troubled Magdalena at her heels, but Rachel bore that well enough. She did not mind so much when it was Hannah and Matthew and Obadiah inquiring after her adventures, but even so she did not have much patience for the constant retelling. She wanted to get to Velora quickly, back to Naomi’s tent, back to the Edori who cared for her.

  She even allowed Obadiah to ferry her down to the city, and found a moment to wonder why she had ever been afraid to be carried up and down that insignificant mountain.

  “You’ve changed,” Obadiah said quizzically, cradling her perhaps a bit closer than necessary against his chest. “Time was you’d have been faint or furious by the time we landed.”

  “I’ve flown so much lately, I’m beginning to feel like an angel myself,” she responded in the same light tone. “Heights do not frighten me at all anymore.”

  “Truly? Then let me take you for a little ride—” He dipped and spun crazily in the air, causing her to shriek and clutch his neck.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” she cried, pretending to strangle him. But she was laughing; he was not alarmed. He did, however, resume normal flying after a breathless moment or two.

  “If you aren’t afraid, why won’t you let me fly you to the Plain?” he asked. “Or Maga. Although I’m stronger than Maga. I should really be your first choice.”

  “I want to travel with the Edori,” she said.

  He touched down, a somewhat more graceful landing than the two she had experienced in Gabriel’s arms. Then again, Obadiah probably had had more practice taking women on pleasure jaunts through the Samarian skies.

  “You just want to make Gabriel mad,” he said calmly. “As usual.”

  She was about to deny it, and then she smiled. “And do you think I’ll succeed?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “As usual.”

  He had brought her directly to the Edori camp, and he waited long enough for Rachel to introduce him to Naomi, Luke and their brood. Naomi, Rachel could see, was surprised to learn that she would be responsible for bringing the angelica to the Plain of Sharon, but she covered her surprise quite nicely until the angel had left. And then she waited till she had heard every last word of Rachel’s escapades before she took up the matter of travel arrangements.

  �
��A frightening, evil man,” was her grave pronouncement on the Archangel’s machinations. “It terrifies me to think he has for so long acted as the link between the god and men.”

  “Jovah is gracious,” Rachel murmured, “to care for us still.”

  “Gabriel came here—did he tell you?—looking for you,” Naomi said. “I told him what you’d said about Raphael destroying your village. And he believed me. And that’s when I got really scared.”

  “He believed me, too,” Rachel said. “But I had stopped being scared by then, because at that point I was with Gabriel.”

  “Which brings us to the most interesting question of all,” Naomi said. “Why aren’t you with Gabriel now?”

  “Because he left this morning while I was still sleeping,” said Rachel coolly. “Leaving orders that I was to get to the Plain as fast as I could.”

  “So why didn’t you go with that nice blond boy who brought you here? Or I’m sure one of the other angels would have taken you—”

  “I’d rather go with you.”

  Naomi leaned forward to try and read secrets in Rachel’s closed face. “Arguing with him again?” she said softly. “Or is it still? You can’t miss the Gloria, you know. You really can’t.”

  “I don’t want to miss it. We’ll get there in plenty of time. If we start right away.”

  “I liked him, Rachel,” Naomi continued. “He really is beautiful.”

  “Very,” Rachel said dryly.

  “He was so frightened for you. He seemed—when we realized where you were—he looked as if he had been stricken blind. He took my hand to help him keep his balance.”

  “He what? He did not.”

  “It’s true as Yovah’s mercy.”

  Rachel shook her head impatiently. “What do you have left that needs packing? I’ll help you. We do have to leave within the hour.”

  And she turned away to survey the neat tent. She pretended not to hear Naomi’s whispered words. “So you do love him. I thought you did.”

  The Chievens made excellent time traveling to the Plain of Sharon. They were a small clan with few elders, able to cover ground quickly. It was a trip that normally took about four days, but they made it in three and a half, arriving the afternoon before the morning that the Gloria was scheduled to be sung. Rachel felt a certain amount of guilt for cutting it quite so close, but she had not missed the nearly omnipresent shadow of angel wings overhead during their entire journey. Gabriel had sent someone to watch over her, and if she had dawdled too long on the road, he would have had that someone carry her willy-nilly to the Plain. She couldn’t decide if the knowledge pleased or enraged her.

  At any rate, early that afternoon, they crossed the low peaks that formed the southwest boundary of the Plain, and descended into the huge, bowl-shaped arena. There were already at least five thousand people camped in the wide, grassy valley, and their tents and standards made gay, colorful patterns against the luxuriant grass. The sun, canting just a little to the west, picked out the blue, violet and rose-quartz colors of the stubby mountains that formed a ring around the whole Plain. Only one peak possessed any claim to height, and that was the Galo mountain, tallest in Samaria, which hid the icy source of the Galilee River. The rest were easy grades, little more than foothills, slaty and amiable in the spring sun.

  “Well, we’re here,” Naomi said as they picked their way through the thick grass. “Now everyone can stop worrying.”

  But, as they shortly learned, even Rachel’s arrival could not alleviate the worries that had accumulated at the Plain of Sharon in the past few days.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Gabriel had been sound asleep when Obadiah and Nathan burst in upon him, Nathan clearly just startled from his own bed and Obadiah showing the unmistakable signs of a long hard flight. He knew there was trouble before either of them spoke.

  “Gabriel, Raphael’s at the Plain of Sharon,” Nathan exclaimed before Obadiah could open his mouth.

  “And most of his angels,” Obadiah said.

  Gabriel swung himself out of bed, by sheer willpower overcoming his lingering exhaustion. “Did you speak to him? What did he say?”

  “I saw him making the rounds of the Manadavvi camps. You know how he likes to spread his golden presence over all the landholders at events like this. Only, this time—”

  “It’s not his event,” Gabriel finished.

  “And we didn’t expect him there at all,” Nathan added.

  “Oh, I expected him,” Gabriel said wearily. “I just couldn’t get there any quicker. He must have left Windy Point almost as soon as we did. Sooner, maybe. Maybe he doesn’t even know Rachel got free … Did you speak to him at all, Obadiah? Hear what he had to say?”

  The blond angel shook his head. “I just took off for here. I didn’t want him to—well, I thought he might try to stop me. Not that I’m afraid of him.”

  “Well, you should be afraid of him. We all should be,” Gabriel said. “All right. Nathan, come with me. We leave for the Plain in thirty minutes.”

  “I’m coming back with you,” Obadiah said.

  “No. You stay here, sleep, follow us as quickly as you can.”

  “Bring Rachel,” Nathan said.

  Obadiah nodded. “Of course.”

  Gabriel looked for a moment at the worn familiar floor. Rachel … If he did not wake her to tell her this news, she would never forgive him. And how could he leave her? During that long flight back he had marveled at how quietly she lay in his arms, as if she trusted him, as if she felt safe with him. He had thought of the hundreds of things he would tell her as soon as they returned to the solid ground and peaceful setting of the Eyrie. How fearful he had been for her safety, how greatly he regretted his angry words the week before she left, how she had come to mean more to him than he had expected, than he had thought possible … And then they had landed in the midst of a crowd and she had left with Hannah, and now he would be disappearing on a mission that he could not delay. But he knew Rachel. She would expect him to have delayed long enough to say goodbye.

  “Bring Rachel,” he said softly, “if she’ll come.”

  There were more than a few people already gathered on the Plain of Sharon. There were hundreds. Arriving around the noon hour, from the air Gabriel identified most Manadavvi clan standards, as well as banners from Jansai towns, the river cities and Luminaux. Edori camps with their distinctive dark tents were clustered on the northwest edge of the Plain; independent farmers and homesteaders banded together for companionship in small groups among the larger ones. More horses and caravans and wayfarers on foot breached the mountain passes from all directions even as he circled down for a landing.

  “Now what?” Nathan said, touching down a few yards away. “Are you going to confront him? And say what? Anyone can come to a Gloria, you know. Everyone is welcome.”

  “Ariel’s here,” was Gabriel’s brief reply. “First I’m going to ask her if she’s heard anything.”

  They found the Monteverde pavilion easily enough, its gold and emerald flags snapping smartly in the light wind, Angels and mortals milled together in hopeless confusion, but one of the younger angels quickly located Ariel for them.

  “Good, you’re here,” was Ariel’s greeting. “Did you bring Maga? Or is she still at the Eyrie?”

  “I left her with Rachel,” Gabriel replied. “What’s going on here? Have you talked to Raphael?”

  Ariel shook her head. “He won’t talk to me—and none of the Manadavvi will tell me what tales he’s been spreading among them, either. I know there’s something going on, because they’re all looking ruffled and secretive. But—what can he do, really? He can’t stop the Gloria, can he?”

  “Is Josiah here?”

  “Yes, and Jezebel and Ezekiel as well,” she said, naming the oracles who served Gaza and Jordana. “Why? Do you think they know something?”

  “They know a lot of things,” Gabriel said with a faint smile. “Take me to them, please.”

  The
oracles and perhaps a combined dozen of their acolytes had set up camp in white tents directly in the shadow of the Galo mountain. Josiah, the eldest of the three, had the largest tent with the most lavish furnishings. Jezebel and Ezekiel, the angels found, were already with him.

  “Gabriel. I’m glad you’re here,” was Josiah’s welcome. Gabriel nodded to him, then made a quick, formal greeting to the white-haired half-blind Ezekiel. He was a good five years younger than Josiah but far less able; he should have been replaced ten years ago, Gabriel thought. And then he grimaced. Clearly Raphael had not cared what sage served him, since he did not believe the seer had any useful function at all. Next, Gabriel shook hands with Jezebel, a solemn, dark-haired woman nearly his own age. Ariel had more than once called Jezebel the smartest person she knew.

  “I couldn’t get here any sooner,” Gabriel said. The angels all settled as comfortably as possible on stools set out by the silent acolytes. “What have any of you heard? Why is Raphael here?”

  “He does not believe in the god,” Ezekiel said in his thin, quavering voice. “He does not believe the god can punish him.”

  “Yes, I’ve learned that,” Gabriel said. “But—”

  “He does not believe the god can punish any of us,” Josiah said quietly. “And he wants to put his theories to the test.”

  “In what possible manner?”

  “He wants to suspend the Gloria,” Jezebel said. “To prove to you—and us—and everyone, that the god does not listen, does not strike and does not even exist.”

  Gabriel could only stare at her.

  “How do you know this?” Ariel demanded.

  “He summoned us to the mountain this morning,” Jezebel began.

  “The mountain?”

  “He and his host have made camp on the top of Galo mountain, the very place where the thunderbolt will fall if the Gloria is not sung—if indeed the god exists, and listens, and is willing to punish us for disobedience,” the Gaza oracle continued.

  “And his plan—no, his offer, is this,” Josiah said, taking up the tale. “He and his angels will wait on the mountain until nightfall tomorrow. If the thunderbolt does not fall at sundown as promised, we—you, I, all of us—will admit there is no god, and we will cede to Raphael such power as he is able to take and keep over all the landholders of Samaria. The angels will disperse, the oracles will leave their mountaintops, we will give up all claims to divine connection. And all will know there is no god.”